Speaker 1 (00:00):
We’ve been trying to get Jamie on uur podcast for how many years since we started long time coming where we’ve got a great guest today, Jamie Dunnick, and he is, as you’ll learn, the CEO of PRINSCO who’s a leader in water management solutions and SCO has become our client for labs. So we’re going to talk about a lot of exciting things, a lot of meaningful things with Jamie today. He’s going to share some wisdom. We’re here today with a good friend of ours, a former boss, and we’ve been looking forward to this. It’s been some time in the making, so thank you for taking the time with us today to have the conversation for sure. So it’s kind of a neat story. Jamie Dunnick is CEO of Prinsco, which is a family business and they’re a leader in the water management solutions industry, so they’re providing solutions for agricultural water management, commercial stormwater management, as well as onsite septic, which is a new market entrance for them. And you’ve been CEO now for three and a half, three and a half years. Would you mind just sharing a little bit about your background and your journey through Prinsco? I think it’s a neat story.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I started in the business family business, so I’ve known about it started at Prinsco in January, I think January 3rd, 1997 after doing some other things right out of college for a few years, got married and worked outside of the family business, lived in other places and wanted to move home, wanted to become part of the family business, and I started more in the sales side and had a sales customer, kind of the relational side of the business, learned to love the water management business and kind of went on this journey, this life journey of combining work with relationships and having a passion to build something not only a company but products that could help others. And the core product that we manufacture is pipe plastic pipe for water management, both in four segments now with retail, residential being one stormwater and other agricultural a third, and now the onsite septic that your company helped develop.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Thank you for sharing all that, Jamie.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
We’ve been on a long journey with PRINSCO and innovation PRINSCO being led by great leaders like Jamie help instill the level of commitment that’s required to grow as a player in any industry, and Jamie’s going to share with us some critical traits that you have to have in order to be successful. Some things that we’ve experienced on our journey with our relationship with Jamie and Preco.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Well, really the main topic of today is to explore how you see innovation, how you’ve driven it in the business. Talk a little bit about the successes and also the learning lessons from those,
Speaker 1 (03:14):
And you’ve had a lot of change as that’s your time at PRINSCO. From supporting sales to becoming the CEO, how has innovation changed your perspective or how has your perspective changed the innovation projection of PRINSCO during your time?
Speaker 3 (03:29):
There’s probably a lot of ways I could go with that. I think the answer though that people need to hear is the commitment that you need to have. You always have to have a high level of commitment when you go into a new project, but when you’ve gone into a new project and then you’ve seen some failures or you’ve seen some delays because you didn’t or we didn’t think it through well, and so there needs to be additional components and additional pieces to this. I think that maturity curve is important and is what I’ve learned is when it isn’t wrong and it’s actually you got to continue to drive forward and continue to innovate and to find new products and have the passion or what we have around water management, well what’s the next thing? But also combining that with that friction of knowing that what the next thing is having a proper amount of pressure on the commitment that it’s going to take to get there. Most of the time it’s the commitment to the people to having the right team working on it that has the time that you free ’em up enough that has the expertise, the technical knowledge, the know-how of where to go and they don’t know.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
You alluded to the failures that occur, but would you say that the failures that occurred, it strengthened your commitment in certain ways because you’re able to recognize how the whole innovation system works exploratory for
Speaker 3 (05:08):
At all stages?
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Yeah, for sure. And some of that commitment is you have a timeline and a lot of times that timeline gets pushed later and you might be close enough but you’re not done. It’s always the hardest, that last little piece because people are worn out with it. They have other commitments within the business. Your partners like you guys don’t just work for us. They have other commitments and you have timelines in which you kind of committed to this. Now it’s extending. There’s usually another financial commitment that you didn’t expect at the end of that, whether it’s a mold for us, it might be a mold redesign or something that a lot of times is significant, it’s time out of production, those kind of things, but some of it is greater than that, but most of the time what we intended is not there yet, so how are we going to finish this?
Speaker 1 (06:09):
It’s like if you’re not practicing and testing and getting out there and exploring, there’s never a chance even to be successful.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
For sure. I think the people side of that is making sure that you have the communication between departments, between stakeholders, that everybody understands what you’re asking and then that they’re all committed to it because it isn’t if you build it, they will come.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
I think those are some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned as we went through that journey. There are several levels of innovation, right? There’s incremental, there’s transformative, and a lot of the projects from my perspective that Prince goes has embarked on, have been transformative for the business, maybe not necessarily in the market, but they weren’t necessarily incremental improvements. We were building expertise, capability and knowledge that we didn’t previously have organically and with those types of adventures comes a lot of risk and I think those were the areas where we probably skinned our knees the most as we were going into transformative opportunities that were not only transformative for the business but in some cases transformative for the marketplace. And without having that cohesion across the organization that understands the significance of that and that can drive it to the market, without that, we’ve learned some valuable lessons.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
And I think when you go into something you have, and let’s just use a lot of different, you have the time commitment you think it’s going to be, but you have the financial commitment and I think one of the things that’s made us successful is we always went into it knowing this is what we’re committing to, whatever it might be, we’re going to innovate this product and we are going to be successful having that kind of commitment. Now, there also is the wisdom to know when to cut your losses, but I think that’s been evident at Brisco through products and through some expansion opportunities and you were involved Carl with when we first went to the West Coast and the requirements of the West coast market were much more stringent than what we were ready for. We could debate whether we should have been ready, we probably should have, but we weren’t. Now we’d made that decision and we can’t go back now. How do we prepare ourselves? That was painful. That was really painful for a while, but it made us a lot better everywhere when we decided to meet that commitment.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Part of that journey has to be the learning and exploration of the conditions. If you’re going in and you’ve got ’em all solved in advance, then you’re probably not pushing hard enough. I would argue, and maybe there’s somewhere in between, but I would argue that that learning is important and necessary.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
I don’t disagree at all. I do think that it’s also part of the journey in your own own workforce at that time. When I think back to that time, we had a lot of people that were eager and hungry and willing to do that, whereas if that would’ve been a different time where there was more mature and maybe you had it further along, but not all the way, you might’ve slipped a little bit there. So I do think there’s a happy medium somewhere there.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Well, the culture that you instill and PRINSCO instills and the legacy members of PRINSCO has instilled has led to the successful outcome of being here today. I think because working with the Preco team throughout the years, it’s always been clear that there’s an accepting condition, that there is change happening and there’s ever-present change. The office is always changing, the team is growing, and I think without that culture being instilled, all these things that we’re talking about could never happen. It’s a key component from my point of view.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Yep, yep, for sure, for sure. And I think it allows for change to be not only growth change but opportunities to change processes to change the way we think about how we’ve always done something because things aren’t the same anymore. We’re different. And sometimes that’s not. We get as humans, I think we get so set in a routine and ordinary, and so sometimes even for us who want to grow and want to change and want to, we don’t like every change. If it affects us, then sometimes it’s like, well wait, maybe we shouldn’t be doing that. When I think the mentality of the greater good is what’s important and not where we’re at or how it’s going to affect me, but the greater good.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
I found that this podcast is very powerful because we do talk about innovation and some of the importance of maintaining commitment throughout our program and taking the right steps to identify success. But more importantly than that, we talk a lot about culture and the importance of cultural and cultural alignments between the business and the partners of the business. In this case, we’re a partner of PRINSCO supporting them, and that cultural alignment is absolutely key and oftentimes underappreciated as being a component to success. Maybe that’s a good segue into talking about a specific project that is pretty recent that we’ve had some learning lessons on and it’s launched, so it’s by and large a success from that standpoint, but there have been some learning lessons and that’s the Pro four. It’s a project that’s close to all of us today.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
We have a very formidable competitor in the market that makes a great product. They’re very technical, Nicole. They are somebody that if you’re at all close to the market and you know should admire because they have done a fantastic job with growing a business and building a product. And so we had been thinking about this for a long time, not just the last three or four years, but the timing became right around covid and we’ve been working on it that long too, just because of some of the supply chain delays and different things and we will continue. We have now as of September of 24, we have launched all the products within that family of products, but that’s kind of the history of, and we can get into, but how this why and how we felt like in order to meet the needs of our customers and what they were asking for, there was a formidable competitor in the market doing great things that needed a formidable competitor.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
What we’re talking about, the product line is called Pro four, and it’s an onsite septic or onsite wastewater treatment system that’s used for where your home or business may be outside of the public sewer and water system. So this system is a way to manage and treat that waste and allow it to naturally be dispersed through the groundwater system once it’s been treated from the ground up. It was fresh for sco, it was something, there was some institutional knowledge, but by and large it was not a market that preco served deeply. So there was a lot of knowledge building. All the parts are injection molded, they’re quite large. So there was a lot of learning through that journey of development
Speaker 3 (13:58):
And we saw it for a number of reasons. One, just the opportunity and if we’re in the water management business and water quality business that this is a place that we want to put our flag in the ground and provide solutions for. So, but you say all that and then you get to the point, okay, how are we going to do this? Because making pipe is very different than high pressure injection molding. So
Speaker 2 (14:25):
I remember when we think back to 2018 as we were embarking on that, maybe it was even before that, I was like, now how do we even do this in terms of making sure that we don’t infringe on existing designs or development and then make something that’s cost effective. It’s like, how do we even do this?
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Where do you start?
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah,
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I think that 2018 through 2020, as we were exploring that, it felt like there was stages where we’re going to take some action and we’re going to hold and see what happens. We’re going to take some action, we’re going to hold and see what happens so that we can let all this information percolate a bit because it’s like if you’re stepping into something new, it’s completely discovery and something this wide is really challenging to get your arm trapped around. What was your view in those early years?
Speaker 3 (15:20):
We sat around talking, we got to make a chamber and well, where did we get started? So we called you. That’s what we did. So
Speaker 2 (15:28):
At least not scary
Speaker 3 (15:30):
That we found the same thing. Yeah, it was pretty quick for us to know that it was outside of our abilities to design and build. Our feeling really was from the very beginning, probably because of the position we were in, which we didn’t know anything. We were expecting you guys to know anything that we took, the approach is going to work from the beginning. We’re going to do this. As difficult as it was, both parties really attack this in a way of, well, here’s the problem, there’s got to be a solution and we’ll figure it out.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
I think that’s where the relationship that had been created in the years before and the cultural alignment between our companies where both companies take extreme ownership over activities allows us to work together really well. And the right team came together at the right time, and I think that’s how this all remotely successful.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
I agree, and I think it’s important too when you say right time, if this would’ve been 10 years earlier, you wouldn’t have been able to build the prototype the way you were with the technology that was available with 3D printing and how you guys thought about that. And those first prototypes of what we were going to do were 24 months probably ahead of a product, and that really allowed for the maintaining of the momentum. Not only see and feeling, no, that’s where we’re going to get, but be able to see it’s going to work. And that’s always super important. That vision of what it can be can only last so long without having something to grab onto.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
When you’re gauging across these teams from sales to engineering, if you don’t have physical product together where you can demonstrate what’s possible, it’s like you’re trying to bridge the gap through 3D CAD and 2D models, and it’s a tool to help keep the team committed.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
And then the other part of that’s the same is we were able to start to share that prototype with customers and to not, another momentum builder is to say, here’s our vision. We know you’re going to like it, and then we’re telling them this for years and now we show ’em and they’re like, yeah, can I write a PO now or when is the, so then that, just keep going, keep going.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
One of the things that I found interesting and not surprising but interesting as we were going through the project is the commitment that you and the team at PRECO had to make the investment in education, learning and discovery. And I’m interested to hear about your perspective about that willingness to make those relatively significant investments.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Well, I think knowing probably a pretty general answer, but I think it’s right. Just knowing the impact of the total project and the impact that it’s going to have or can have if we do it right, made that relatively expensive investment pretty small. So I think that’s the way we looked at it is, yeah, this is significant. It’s not something we expected when we first went into this, but if it’s going to get us, if that’s what we need now to get to where these projections, it’s still worth it. The return on investment is still there.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
That coupled with the strong belief that you said earlier, we knew we could get there, we didn’t know how, but we knew we could get there. And I think that shared belief between yourself and our team, neither of us knew exactly what that path looked like, but the belief that we were going to find a solution along with the strong ROI, it sounds like it made it
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Easy in the end, that whole process and the stress that’s in that process, if you have the confidence in the fact that your partner is committed to the project, I don’t think there was a time where anyone on our team had a sleepless night. They were wondering if DI Labs or 2020 was committed to it,
Speaker 2 (19:42):
And it goes both ways. The commitment that preco had is paramount to driving that partnership commitment as well. So it’s neat to see the symbiotic nature there.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
It was critical as we explored some alternatives in the middle area of the development cycle, it’s like, well, I’m not sure if this can work, but we’ve got to find a solution, so we’re going to continue down this journey. And I think that test, it’s like a continuous test of commitment throughout the journey, and I think going through that process builds more trust with others and it makes it easier is we came back and we went back to the injection molded approach. PRINSCO stepped away from it with a commitment to solve. We continued to be committed to solving. So when we came back to it, it wasn’t like we took time off. It’s like we’re still barreling ahead. Do you want to join us or do we need to take this alternate approach? That’s really powerful.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Well, I can say that the project for us, I won’t speak for both of us, was the most successful rewarding project we’ve ever been a part of. And I wish all of our customers were like PRINSCO or all of our clients were like PRINSCO and I wish all of our supplier relationships, partnerships were like what we have with PRINSCO. So your values around relationships really, really do matter and it’s such a refreshing experience.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
It’s interesting you say the most successful and rewarding project, pretty sure it wasn’t the most profitable, and you’re still saying that. And so I think that speaks to the commitment and the relationship.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
It’s knowing that this is going to be hard, but we’re committed to making it happen because it’s so rewarding when it does happen and then to see the end results of the fruits of that labor. It’s kind of what life’s about at times.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
It is what life’s about.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Yeah,
Speaker 2 (21:36):
For sure. You think about all these experiences you’ve had at PRINSCO leading the business or different aspects of the business. What advice would you give to your younger self about innovation and some of the things we’ve talked about today?
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Being focused on your vision and the innovation you need to have in your vision, but never lose sight of the culture you’re building within your business because the culture will sustain you through those times when you’re wrong because you’re going to be wrong. And if you build a great culture, your employees will want to be there when it’s good and they’ll want to be there when it’s not so good.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
It’s neat to hear the journey through your time at PRINSCO and also your perspective on the team members and people. It’s something I experienced and one of the reasons I think that today is quite special for me personally because of our relationship, and I can still remember the day that I came out and wintery Wilmer Minnesota Day and we got to drive around together to explore the town. So you certainly live your values and I know that you impact those who work with you and for you. So it’s really
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Neat to hear. And I remember the day too, and it was in March, I think maybe even April, but it was late winter and it was one of those days where you just want to poke your eyes out because winter should be over and it’s not. I mean it’s like full forest winter. And so we were in the office interviewing and dreaming together and those kind of things pretty much all day didn’t leave because of the weather. And Carl had a rental car and he gets to his car and the whole side was like six, eight inches of snow. It was blowing into the door and he just stood there and he looked around and he ended up lifting his leg up and kicking the snow off the door handle to open the door and we’re like, we looked at each other. He’s never coming to work here, he’s never moving to Minnesota. But it all worked out. So not only Carl did you move, but decided to stay in rural America and rural Minnesota and your entire family really moved this way and now you are appreciated in the community. You’re bringing good things to the community, not only personally but professionally by adding jobs and creating a tax base and all kinds of things that it’s really important and it’s really rewarding to have my little part in that. I brought you guys here for a job and then you guys did the rest and should be proud of that.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Thank you for your kind words.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Yeah, it’s unbelievable to think about the potential impact that companies can have in having the right culture and bringing like-minded individuals to a place like Wilmer because it’s unexpected.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
We’re grateful to be a part of that from the outside, supporting your success and really congratulations on the continued growth and success.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Well, thank you. And we wouldn’t be where we’re at without our people that work with us in the business every day and those that are our partners that work with us on projects like you guys, so we can continue to grow and we continue to lean on one another and serve one another in ways that benefit all of us. Yeah. Well thanks. Thank you guys. Appreciate it was fun.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Thanks for joining us. This has been fantastic.
